Stephanie
Diamond Member
- Jul 11, 2004
- 70,230
- 10,864
probably no going back.. that's why we have a tyrant Federal government now
SNIP:
BY PHILIP KLEIN | AUGUST 14, 2014 | 6:00 PM
TOPICS: CONGRESS SENATE LIBERALISM FEDERALISM FEDERALIST PAPERS
It may sound pedestrian to point out, but its critical to restate why its so important that our nation is called the United States of America, and not simply America.
The full name emphasizes that the Founders viewed the nation not as one monolithic entity but as a union of sovereign entities delegating limited powers to a central government.
The basic constitutional architecture still remains, and it's frustrating for those who want to augment the role of the federal government in people's lives.
To preserve this balance, the Founders put a number of checks in the U.S. Constitution, most notably creating the Senate, which allows for equal membership from every state, thus preventing states with larger populations from running roughshod over the interests of smaller ones.
The concept of federalism has eroded substantially since the nations founding, in no small part due to those who appropriated the concept to defend the brutal institution of slavery and injustice of racial segregation.
Yet the basic constitutional architecture still remains, and it's frustrating for those who want to augment the role of the federal government in peoples lives.
This month, the issue bubbled up again after the Economist ran a chart demonstrating how much more liberal major U.S. cities were relative to the national average.
Jonathan Cohn, a liberal policy writer at the New Republic, wrote that the chart was a reminder of a fundamental problem with our democracy, one thats baked into the constitutional order. Im talking, of course, about the United States Senate, where the apportionment of two seats for each state can give rural states disproportionate power power that comes at the expense of urban states, the ones with lots of the left-leaning cities.
He went on to note that the power of smaller states in the Senate puts liberalism at a political disadvantage.
ALL of it here:
Washington is divided because it has abandoned federalism | WashingtonExaminer.com
SNIP:
BY PHILIP KLEIN | AUGUST 14, 2014 | 6:00 PM
TOPICS: CONGRESS SENATE LIBERALISM FEDERALISM FEDERALIST PAPERS
It may sound pedestrian to point out, but its critical to restate why its so important that our nation is called the United States of America, and not simply America.
The full name emphasizes that the Founders viewed the nation not as one monolithic entity but as a union of sovereign entities delegating limited powers to a central government.
The basic constitutional architecture still remains, and it's frustrating for those who want to augment the role of the federal government in people's lives.
To preserve this balance, the Founders put a number of checks in the U.S. Constitution, most notably creating the Senate, which allows for equal membership from every state, thus preventing states with larger populations from running roughshod over the interests of smaller ones.
The concept of federalism has eroded substantially since the nations founding, in no small part due to those who appropriated the concept to defend the brutal institution of slavery and injustice of racial segregation.
Yet the basic constitutional architecture still remains, and it's frustrating for those who want to augment the role of the federal government in peoples lives.
This month, the issue bubbled up again after the Economist ran a chart demonstrating how much more liberal major U.S. cities were relative to the national average.
Jonathan Cohn, a liberal policy writer at the New Republic, wrote that the chart was a reminder of a fundamental problem with our democracy, one thats baked into the constitutional order. Im talking, of course, about the United States Senate, where the apportionment of two seats for each state can give rural states disproportionate power power that comes at the expense of urban states, the ones with lots of the left-leaning cities.
He went on to note that the power of smaller states in the Senate puts liberalism at a political disadvantage.
ALL of it here:
Washington is divided because it has abandoned federalism | WashingtonExaminer.com
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